New Becomings

 No one gossips about other people's secret virtues ~  Bertrand Russel I find it mind-boggling at best and horrific at worst when people decide that gossiping and spreading rumours are some kind of relevant sharing of information - like they're doing people a favour, distributing negative details about others; often those details are simply made-up or misappropriated knowledge by scurrilous intent. In the age of social media, people will share suicide prevention campaigns and then appallingly denigrate people in their community; playing a lame adult game of broken-telephone, happily dispersing horrible specifics of things they know nothing about. Folks will tell others to 'grow up' without taking a good look inside themselves. It's pathetic and apathetic, it's habitually unconscious and consciously mischievous. These same people pretend to be self-aware, perhaps even think they're aware; but it's a facade easily exposed by watching and listening to what ...

  It's a trendy thing these days, not expressing anger, pretending it doesn't exist, breathing through the pangs of pain while it festers in the gut like some kind of indignant infant kept from being birthed. The thing is, anger is a gift and should be felt wholeheartedly, treated with the respect it deserves, because it's there for a reason. As soon as negativity arises it should be expressed, in full glory - not to say that it should be expressed in ways that can harm others or oneself, but it must be released. Once it is released, it can no longer take up space somewhere lurking in the mind and heart. If negativity is squashed or tamped down to appease other people (or to make oneself feel like a fully in-tune badass Bodhisattva who doesn't actually experience anything inferior to good), it buries itself deeper and hides in-wait for another opportunity to escape; usually in an ambush of something innocuous like stubbing a toe or spilling coffee - and then the day is...

  I decided to block a bunch of people from my social media; anyone, 'friends' or not, who came on my feed and showed themselves in offensive or perpetually supercilious commentary in community pages or the pages of my friends/family. I've done it before, sure, people who were directly negative to me; but this time, blocking the profiles of people who are generally nasty online is a whole new way of letting loose and reining in. A buoyancy in my demeanour was obvious afterwards, and I knew it was the right thing to do. In the past, I felt it was important to sometimes engage with these kinds of commentators; try to have a conversation, try to understand where they were coming from, try to share another point of view. There's no more trying, I'm done. Why bother? Outsiders have become alleged insiders, thinking they know me better than I do, through a very narrow lens at that. It seems certain people have become little targets, not sure why; social media is for shari...